The good enough philosophy

The good enough philosophy

Samuel Bird

I have been fortunate to be well acquainted with people of all kinds. Proximity and conversation afforded me friendships and connections with people as diverse as this planet has to offer. With that, there was not only great variety in where these people were from or what they looked like but also in the minds and ideals they possessed. An argument could be made here for what causes this variety, but I find it more impressive just how much we all have in common. It is difficult to have an interspecies norm when there are no conscious extra-terrestrials, but I still marvel at the overlap of our beliefs. They somehow prompt our behavior to maximize value for self and others, make sense of facts of the world, and make a model of the world simple enough to comprehend. These tend to be shared across all such ideologies. The diverse faiths, scientific applications, interpersonal roles, and formal philosophies give humanity a point from which to stand and view the world, as well as perhaps some archemedic leverage to move it. There is, of course, an age-old dialectic on which of these ideologies has premier merit in terms of truth value and bringing value. I have participated in conversations where each type of these ideas was defended or attacked. I think back to a tender memory from some years ago. 

I was walking past a house and saw many young men sitting outside at midday. I stopped and began to chat with them. I soon found they were Satanists. I was curious and began to ask them about it and see how their assertions held up to reason in terms of more basic facts. They didn’t see the well-meaning thought process I was responding to them with, and promptly pulled out firearms. A lesser writer would use this as a time to give you a disclaimer that not all Satanists are like this, but if they wanted a better reputation for their beliefs, they shouldn’t have threatened my life. I stayed facing them and started backing up with my hands up. I told them that I would be out of there and they didn’t have to worry about me. They told me that even if I left, they would just shoot me when I got far enough away and the type of neighborhood it was, would make it impossible to verify that it was them out of all the people there. I quit backing up as my mind began to run through the facts before a bullet ran through it. It was clear: I was in a pickle. I couldn’t turn back, I couldn’t go forward, and talking it out is why I was in this situation in the first place. Just then, the neighboring door flew open and a mammoth of a man stepped out and began to yell at them, but without profanity. “These are my brothers. You shall not hurt them. He roared. They all tucked tale and went back into their home. I then ran to him to thank this stranger who defended me as if we shared a mother. He nodded his head that towered over mine, introduced himself as Jupiter and told me it was part of his Muslim faith and that he was honored to help me. I have personally not converted to Islam, but I can say that I am grateful for what he did that day. Outside of keeping me safe, he did something more important. Rather than just having something to believe in, he did something about it. 

When I make a new friend, I try to understand what it is they really believe. This can be a few layers below what they purport to believe. I then ask myself how accurately and precisely they follow that belief. Of course, I don’t do so explicitly, but wait for them then to confess it. The caliber of character is then shown in the exactness to which they act on those beliefs. In the example of my tall friend who saved me from being shot that day, he was acting in accordance with his values even at personal peril. Outside of the absolution of Islamic metaphysical claims, we find this impressive. Why? There are a plethora of adoptable worldviews. Each has a case for it that we can cling to. Each has a case against it that we will either try to ignore or be aware of it and the related weaknesses. Like many people, when I was a young person, it became a painful process to decide which of all the ideas were right. If I took a middle-of-the-road approach and assumed all were true, I would quickly find them at odds with each other. A certain political system would have merit but then have a horrendous socioeconomic outcome. A moral discipline would give me an action plan, but would also result in behavior my gut fought against. I was then caught between whether my instinct against the outcomes had any merit. My young mind was then taken back to losing any ground of certainty it had fought to occupy. This led to me picking a worldview, but realizing how contingent that fact was, I would do so with a sense of caution. I wanted to maximize whatever existence was, and this half-hearted living was not allowing me that. I then looked at my beliefs that were now being restructured and refined to fit in a primitive Esse Maxim. 

It would always be the case that my ideas were possibly wrong, lesser, or missing vital insights I did not have access to. I could say I am a deontologist and then rid myself of responsibility, but my objective was a full life, not the idea that I had attempted toward. What was this full life then? What one value could stand before any philosophy, faith, or worldview? What would be objectively of merit no matter my fortune in what I had access to think and believe? This is where the idea of living deliberately and engaging with existence first came. They then became a sort of meta-value to the metaphilosophy of Esse Maxim. Why did we build this system and act in accordance with it? Because we wanted to live deliberately and engage with our existence. In the conversation of consciousness and humans, there is experience such that it is both transpiring and there is an awareness that it is. Rather than just to have the experience associated with existence, the possibility of awareness affords us to be cognisant of it. We can now look at the life at hand, and begin to be an agent in our own existence. This engagement can be misdirected, bad, or even worthless in a cold universe, but the fact that we can, prompts an ineffable should. This is the one thing that we can always control. You may say that one could deliberately and engagingly be a serial killer, pseudoscientist, or a naysayer to life. These would all be possibilities. This is not a value system that gives you answers, but the system that that would go into. Esse Maxim is the structure that would uphold what you placed into it. Perhaps what you placed therein is related to stoicism, virtue ethics, or dualism. They would in turn give you the grounding for morality that you need. Esse Maxim is the system you use to make it consistent, have it grounded and properly basic, and make it what you engage with. 

All people have some sort of ideal they live and act in accordance with. The vacuum of which would breed a replacement nearly immediately from the human mind. I see people then asking what is the best thing to believe. What I have found however is that most people believe in something that is good enough. It can give a basic grounding for reality, give them a system on how to act, and fit their experiences into a nice little story. There is inequality in the accessibility and quality, but all have some iteration of such. I love to read and explore a multitude of books on everything from science, personal life experience, history, and a variety of philosophy. I like to learn and understand more, but when the book is laid down, I am still myself. Readings of Boetheus, Lao Tzu, and Socrates give me such wonderful ideas, but then I am left with my same weaknesses and faults. I have found that this is the bigger issue. There could be some great work done in helping people with higher-quality ideas by objective parameters, but it hardly matters if they don’t act on what they already think. How can I read Camus, Nietchze, and Nagel, when I haven’t even graduated from my current worldview? I have previously said that one can infer the outcomes of a philosophy from the philosopher, and here I see us lacking. We build such elaborate systems of thought that we could defend with such vigor and precision. However, how well do we act in accordance with that idea? I want to be a thinker who brings ideas into the world, but I’ll be honest, I think we have too many of my kind. What we don’t have enough of are stoics with complete discipline, Christians with never-failing charity, or Muslims with never wavering devotion. We of course have examples of people reaching for the stars and finding themselves in the clouds. I hope you are as careful and precise about what you believe as you can be. Stay up late studying, lose sleep, and sacrifice all comforts, but when you are done and you have picked something, live it. You have time to find out how wonderfully wrong you were and adapt your beliefs or even courageously walk away. However, when it comes to how you relate to all of existence, you can have something good enough. 

I love supporting people in devoloping themselves. I fint his fascinating, and it allows me to see this process better. I had found a system that was effective for acheiving the goals that I had. It was so extremely effective that I was asked to share it with hundreds of others. I had many specific actionable items, but there was one thing that was central. It matters less what you do and more that you do it. Of course, I have learned nuance and would now rather say that, in the pursuit to find what to do, we should be doing it along the way. My friend who was helping me with the training and from his own successes began to think about how to help mobilize people. “If you are wondering what to do outside, figure it out, outside.” He said. Here, he demonstrated that the follow through of an ideal was in the living, as well as the finding of the ideals is in the acting it out. Some things we can figure out a priori. Other times, we are left with only trying some series of actions or larger behavorial model to see what fruits this brings. I see great pain that comes from when we forget that our beliefs were only in their testing phase and become dogmatic on something we wouldn’t be if we sat down to think. 

I have since meeting Jupiter, read a few dozen pages of the Quran, listened to people talk about its central tenets, and learned about its history. Like any belief system, as I really understand it, I feel the pull that undergirds other’s belief in it. I feel a desire to participate and accept its precepts. However, I feel the same pull from other ideas and the lack of them. Each of them has a case, but in the end, it is seemingly impossible to know who has the net best case. What I can say about it, is that it helped my tall friend that hot summer day. It gave him an idea of who he was, what the world was, and what he must do. It was something to believe in that stayed off the privations of our age that are without human-centric needs for goodness, meaning, and beauty. I have heard many arguments against his faith. They came from necessary facts about it or contingent facts about how it was acted out. However, I can say as someone who says yes to life, that I am grateful for what his beliefs did for me that day. You may still have your critiques and assert there is a better system for existing deliberately, however, I can confidently say that it was good enough.